After briefly flirting with the No. 2 spot, Gautam Adani at $110 billion ends 2022 as the third richest person in the world and the richest in India. Despite the recent dip in Adani group shares, his wealth is up $33.80 billion, or $44.2 per cent this year, as per publicly available data with Bloomberg Billionaire Index. He is the only billionaire among the top 10 billionaires in the world who has seen a rise in fortune in 2022. The year was marked by sharp selloff in equities on fears of global recession.
To put it in perspective, Gautam Adani’s wealth is equal to the 64th largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, based on 2021 IMF estimates, ahead of Puerto Rico and Ecuador.
The wealth Adani added in 2022, in fact, is higher than the 2021 GDP of at least 85 countries such as El Salvador Honduras, Cyprus El Salvador, Cambodia, Iceland, Yemen, Senegal and Cyprus.
The wealth he added is also higher than the market capitalisation of Pakistan Stock Exchange (at roughly $30 billion). Pakistan Stock Exchange’s market cap stood at PKR 64,09,47,32,80,070 (or 6,409.47 billion Pakistani rupee) as of December 26, as per the exchange’s daily market report. This, at the prevailing exchange rate, stood at $28.41 billion.
Besides, Adani’s wealth was one-fifth of India’s $563.50 billion forex reserves (as of December 16).
Adani, 60, has business interest in renewable energy, power transmission and distribution, transportation and logistics, airports and defence, among others.
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Gautam Adani’s total fortunes hit $150 billion mark on September 20, before seeing some fall. He still stays ahead of Reliance Group’s Mukesh Ambani, whose wealth stands at $85.4 billion, as per the Bloomberg data.
Six Adani group stocks added a total Rs 6.78 lakh crore in market capitalisation so far this calendar. Adani Wilmar, another group stock, which got listed on February 8 earlier this year, has seen its m-cap rise Rs 33,720 crore to Rs 68,187.64 crore from Rs 34,467.48 crore on Day 1 of listing.
Shares of Adani Power have jumped 176 per cent to Rs 275.35 apiece on Monday from Rs 99.75 on December 31, 2021. Shares of Adani Enterprises have rallied 117.47 per cent; Adani Total Gas 93 per cent, Adani Transmission 42 per cent, Adani Green Energy 41 per cent and Adani Ports 10 per cent. Adani Wilmar is up 139 per cent over its IPO issue price of Rs 230.
